Spring, 1999. So, whatever happened to those company records you filed with EPA to comply with the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act ("EPCRA") and other environmental laws? If you think they are filed away, gathering dust, never to come back to haunt your company, you need to take a hard look at two of the hottest sites on the Internet.

After three years of preparation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Sector Facility Indexing Project ("SFIP") is now publicly available, providing, via the Internet, all kinds of sensitive data about your company's operations, environmental inspections, and compliance history. The SFIP, EPA's latest and most popular internet project, adds an important new dimension to EPA's Community "Right-to-Know" program.

That information you filed on your EPCRA Tier I or II Inventory forms and your Form Rs? That's the data the public has a right to know about, but rarely comes to know, right? Not anymore. EPA is sifting through that information and lots of other environmental records, incorporating it into a powerful database, and broadcasting it unrestricted over the Internet.

It's now easy for anyone to obtain your complete environmental track record, and for your company to be haunted by the ghosts in those EPCRA files.

SFIP is a database that provides detailed sensitive information on more than 650 individual facilities in five industry sectors: automobile assembly, pulp manufacturing, petroleum refining, iron and steel production, and the primary smelting and refining of nonferrous metals. If your company isn't on the site, it will be included soon, as the project evolves and incorporates data from facilities in other industry sectors.

The SFIP data "indicators" include sensitive company information such as the number of local, state and federal inspections, noncompliance data, enforcement actions taken, chemical releases and spills, your production capacity, hazardous materials used, and hazardous wastes released.

SFIP currently focuses primarily on EPA data from EPCRA's Chemical Inventory and Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) programs. SFIP also includes data EPA has collected pursuant to air, water, and hazardous/solid waste regulatory programs. Data from other federal programs will be included in the future.

SFIP allows internet users to access standardized reports, construct customized online queries, and download datasets for subsequent use. Internet users can also use SFIP site to email EPA for more information and answers to hard questions about your company's operations and environmental track record.

Just how popular is this information now that it's on the Internet? Since May 1998, the SFIP web site has recorded over 46,224 distinct visitors. And EPA is just getting started.

EPA and environmental groups think its great that the public now has ready access to this data, to interpret it as they may, and ask whatever questions or take whatever actions they please. EPA thinks that by making this information available on the Internet, the public will be better informed about risks, and companies will be forced to clean up their acts.

However, many in industry believe that the prospects of improving the public's understanding of actual risks of industrial operations based on this project are uncertain, and marginal at best. Industry groups are concerned that the SFIP site will actually misinform the public about environmental risks of industrial facilities.

SFIP represents a culmination of one large aspect of EPA's impressive internet presence. EPA has, for several years stored information regarding facility-level environmental records in separate databases that relate to individual statutes and programs. One such database which has not been available on the Internet is EPA's Integrated Data for Enforcement Analysis system ("IDEA"). Another database which has been available on the Internet is EPA's "Envirofacts" web site. According to EPA, the Envirofacts site has experienced more than 3.5 million internet "hits." Although the number of distinct users is always far less than the internet "hits," Envirofacts has certainly been a significant resource for informing the internet public about your facilities.

But comprehensive facility-level data reports that cut across multiple programs have not been available previously through these databases. Until the advent of SFIP, these records were difficult for government and public users to access because they were spread across many different databases and web domains.

And EPA is not the only organization making this data available to the public via the internet. In April, 1998, the Environmental Defense Fund ("EDF") launched the EDF Chemical Scorecard information service on the Internet. The Scorecard web site allows users to locate chemical pollution sources and hazards and local street maps of communities across the US, access health effects information about the chemicals tracked in the US Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), and send queries directly to facility managers and the U.S. EPA.

EDF's Scorecard site is a huge success, and presents another reason for industry to be concerned about the Internet. Between May and August, 1998, Scorecard had experienced more than 1.5 million queries to the database, and managers at more than 1200 industrial facilities have received emails from the site.

Although EPA claims that the databases for both Scorecard and the SFIP are subject to thorough quality reviews to assure accuracy, companies and industry trade organizations are skeptical. Industry is concerned that these internet sites result in improper characterizations of manufacturing facilities, and provide the public with misleading information.

According to Thomas Jorling, Vice President of Environmental Affairs for International Paper Co., "the databases being consolidated in the SFIP are not accurate and corrections to those databases that were requested by the company have not been made."

According to Georgia Callahan of Texaco, "Texaco is concerned that SFIP will bring undeserved negative attention to some facilities and companies. For example, according to Texaco, a facility with a large number of relatively minor paperwork or quickly-remedies violations may appear to be a 'bad actor', while another which lags badly in attending to its few, but serious, violations may appear exemplary by comparison."

And the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers ("AIAM") is concerned that compliance indicators fail to account for positive accomplishments by facilities. As a result, AIAM believes that SFIP will discourage self-auditing and participation in regulatory reinvention programs. AIAM believes that after SFIP, facilities may be reluctant to share information with EPA which will be used against them by EPA's enforcement staff.

Whether the SFIP or Scorecard web sites misinform the public about your facilities depends on what you can do now to limit internet access to your data, or, at a minimum, to ensure its accuracy. Prior to the first release of the SFIP, EPA engaged in efforts to ensure the accuracy of the information, including the opportunity for each profiled facility to review and comment on their underlying data. Ensuring ongoing accuracy requires constant vigilance on the part of both EPA and each regulated facility.

Companies should take steps to identify information which will be made public via SFIP, keep abreast of future SFIP program developments in the federal register, participate early in EPA's comment and data review process, confirm data accuracy, and correct any errors. And don't rely on those confidential business information claims you originally submitted with the information -- EPA will be reviewing the eligibility of those claims in order to make complete information about your company available to the public via the SFIP.

Click here if you would like more information and step-by-step procedures for protecting your sensitive company information.

Join us (coming soon) for an online interactive interview with the Assistant Director of EPA's Office of Enforcement, and the coordinator of the SFIP.